But what’s missing? Here are six ways bloggers can become more attractive to advertisers.

Cross-Media Integration

Advertisers looks at many metrics when considering advertising on a blog — page views, daily visitors, average time on site, CPM, among others.

One of the growing metrics on an advertiser’s radar is a blog’s social media page. Advertisers not only look at how many followers a blog has but, more importantly, also look at the conversations being held on the blog’s page and social media channels. Can advertisers see themselves being a topic of conversation? Are open-ended questions being asked around a certain product?

When advertisers see a blog’s large following on Twitter, they see their ROI increasing. Incorporating sponsored social media posts (i.e. sponsored tweets) into your offerings will make a blog’s brand more lucrative. Outside of social media, consider other media. During the past five years, I’ve made more than 50 TV appearances that focused on blog content. As a lifestyle blogger this was a natural fit, and this is an attractive option to heighten exposure for your advertisers.

Get Advertisers Involved

Offer a variety of sponsorship opportunities other than banner ads. Polls, product spotlights and giveaways are great ways to help a blog’s aesthetic and give advertisers options to showcase their brand.

Some advertisers want to only participate in giveaways while others may only want to guest post. Guest posts are among the most common ways advertisers get involved with blogs. Guest posts are typically used by brands to build web traffic and to put readers in a purchasing frame of mind. Along with their content, guest posts typically have a byline and a link to the respective blog or website increasing their web stats.

Note that it is imperative to remain up front with readers and disclose that a special section is paid for.

Get Readers Interacting with Advertisers

This is arguably one of the most important components of a campaign. If, for example, a blogger reviews a storage product like Backup Genie review and then asks readers to weigh in with their opinions, ask them if they are already using it, plan on buying it or how it would make their lives better. Getting readers to interact with a brand is what advertisers are truly searching.

Know Your Blog Rank and How to Improve It

There are two leading ways advertisers use to measure a site’s performance: Google Page Rank and Alexa ranking. These ranking systems allow website owners to benchmark their websites and give advertisers metrics for evaluation.

Google Page Rank is an algorithm that ranks a site from 0 to 10 with a major emphasis on quality backlinks. It’s no surprise that if the Google bots don’t like something, like a broken backlink, a blog’s Page Rank score could be in jeopardy. As Page Rank (PR) is slow to update (PR is only updated every 3-4 months), it’s difficult to better your PR in a short amount of time.

If a blog is stagnating at a PR3 for a while, it could mean there are on-page issues that should be checked using Xenu. Alexa ranking is a free online directory that measures how many daily visitors a site receives, along with other traffic metrics and search analytics. Both are important to advertisers, but Page Rank is measured on your website reputation and Alexa is measured on website traffic.

Let Numbers Speak for Themselves

A media kit gives advertisers a quick glance of what they need to know. It should be updated regularly (and honestly) with the blog’s positioning, like this:

Active in social circles (only share follower number if blog’s social media has more than 5,000 followers)

Blogs for two group blogs

Contributing blogger for major Topic XYZ website

Know Your Advertising Options

What better way to help build your brand than to hit the pavement and meet advertisers, share your inspiration for the blog and why you think they would benefit from advertising? But if being in the field isn’t your thing, let those who specialize in blog advertising help win new advertisers. Adsense and Amazon Affiliates are among the leaders but research to find a good fit for your blog.

It’s getting easier than ever to garner interest from new advertisers, but harder to weed out scammers.

The longevity of a blog is on based consistent, quality content (and ranking!) but bloggers monetize best when they deliver results to advertisers.

Brianne Bauer has garnered publicity for lifestyle brands like Paramount Pictures, and personalities such as Mariel Hemingway and Cheryl Tiegs. With a background in magazine publishing and corporate PR, she is now a freelance publicist and writer based in Minneapolis.

About Guest Blogger

This post was written by a guest contributor. Please see their details in the post above.

They won’t care much if your traffic is targeted for their products and services. An advertiser who has a new gadget to sell can be more than interested in advertising on your blog.

About link selling, be careful with it. It’s not a viable strategy with all the algorithm updates on the horizon. If you can get your traffic up to 5000 uniques per day, you can look into Google Adsense for some decent income.

Are advertisers really bothered about things like page rank? If they’re after traffic rather than a link then surely they’d be more interested in the number of visitors and how focused they are, or how good a match they are for their products and services?

As a consumer, my favourite form of advertising is sponsored posts where there is a great fit between the blogger and the product/service.

As an advertiser, I don’t worry too much about PageRank, but I do keep tabs on traffic stats, and usually start with a trial period during which I can evaluate conversions. If I’m getting terrible clicks and conversions from a particular ad, the publisher and I can agree to part ways.

I’ve signed year-long advertising contracts that have ended up being a waste of money and attention, both for me and for the publisher — wouldn’t they be happier publishing ads that are a better fit for their readers, if the rates are the same?

Hey Brianne….nice post really helpful and full of information…..well I would say media kit plays an important role and i am surely gonna go for this one as I want good advertiser for my blog…so these are some tips which gonna help you certainly..

This is a great article – thanks very much. I like the idea of being open and up front and providing some key stats that will let advertisers know quickly how successful the blog is and also providing additional advertising options.

My own blog isn’t there yet, but it’s all information i’ll be putting into practice in a few months time I hope!

I slightly disagree–I don’t believe every blog needs to bother with advertising their page rank.

My target market is not going to inquire about page rank and they have never inquired about page rank in my almost four years of blogging. I believe that that addition to a media kit really depends on what your subject is and who is reading it.

A tech blog may need to share that information but a site like mine will do better to leave it off of there. If it is something your potential advertisers won’t understand or find confusing, I’d leave it off.

I totally agree with the point of Reach readers to interact with advertisers, readers certainly are at the helm of the blog and will be those who will make us grow, so we always take into account for my blogs. Excellent article!

If you are planning on engaging directly with advertisers, then you should be trying to build up a relationship with them as early as possible (even if your blog is not currently at the stage where it is getting enough traffic or prestige for paid advertisers). By doing this you will be taken more seriously as a potential advertising partner, and when the time comes to strike up a proposition it will hopefully be successful.

Advertisers majorly focus on Alexa Rank, Google PageRank, MozRank and Domain Authority in order of priority in my opinion. No matter how many traffic we get, how much quality readerbase our blog has, it doesn’t matter. So it is equally important to improve those metrics as well to attract advertisers.

Do you agree that the use of graphics and too many embellishments on the blog may also attract advertisers? I noticed that many bloggers use very colorful and interesting designs. However, some go beyond what is really attractive, I mean, some blog pages are bombarded with embellishments, yet they still generate the interest of advertisers.

A good article that sheds light on a very common blogger problem–making money on your own blog site. The truth is, we all want to make money from our blog sites but oftentimes, we don’t know how to start. We think quality content is king but obviously, this isn’t enough to attract the advertisers and make good money.

Letting the numbers speak for itself and knowing your ranks are two of the most important things I got from this article. Why? Simple. Because these are the two first things that any advertisers are looking for. Essentially, why would they advertise in a site that has low rankings and pag visits? So, it really makes sense that if you want to make money from your blog, make it visible because ads are meant to be seen anyway.

With advertisers you’re only as good as your audience. If you’re audience doesn’t match the advertisers target, it doesn’t matter what you do. Seek out advertisers who identify with your niche. If you’ve built up a loyal following of their target audience you’ll have the leverage. In the information era, access to a loyal niche following is hard to come by.

Build a list of businesses that match your audience. Then reach out to them and play them against each other. Remember, if you’ve done your job you have the leverage, not them.

Nice read, thank you. I’ve been trying to find info about using images from Amazon, as an affiliate I have recently had my wrist slapped by a manufacturer for using the images of their product! But the images were on Amazon….how are you meant to advertise a product if you cannot use the images?

We have recently been putting together a Media Kit for our portfolio of websites and have been playing to our strengths.. Our social reach is not very strong yet but we are growing every month.. Quality backlinks and god content is what makes the different. Also a good PR is nice, but there had not been an update since Feb!